Peng Wang: Plant Physiology First Author

Peng Wang, first author of “Transcript and metabolite network perturbations in lignin biosynthetic mutants of Arabidopsis”

Current Position: Scientist at PACT Pharma

Education: Ph.D. Biochemistry at Purdue University; B.Sc. Biology at Nanjing University

Non-scientific interests: Hiking, playing badminton

Brief bio: Grown up in the countryside, I developed strong interests in nature and decided to study biology in college. I obtained my Ph.D. in Biochemistry in Dr. Clint Chapple’s lab at Purdue, where my thesis focused on phenylpropanoid metabolism and the control of the enormous carbon flux into and within the branched the metabolic network. After the doctoral training, I worked as an assay and analytics scientist at Willow Biosciences, a synthetic biology company. With the Willow team, I developed a powerful high-throughput pipeline to screen engineered yeast cells for cannabinoid biosynthesis. It was a lot of fun to see our knowledge of plant biochemistry being applied to produce beneficial compounds in fermenters. Currently I’m a process development scientist at PACT Pharma, a personalized T-cell therapy company, where we screen for effective killer T-cells from patients to fight against their cancer.